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There are not many movies that have caught the eye quite like The Substance. A body horror masterpiece soaked in the blood of biting social commentary,The Substance is the perfect follow-up to director Coralie Fargeat‘s 2017 debut, Revenge. Starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, the film has unpacked society’s damning expectations of female beauty standards all whilst racking up a notable Box Office total. Now, after exactly a month in theaters, the film is set to hit $30 million globally, currently poised on $29 million. This comes after a fifth weekend that saw the movie endure on nationwide screens, earning just shy of $1 million from 548 theaters.
It’s important to remember that, for a film such as The Substance, Box office expectations are often kept low. Body horror exploitation flicks always prove divisive, and, add to that the movie’s lesser-known distributor MUBI and the fact that Universal eventually passed on the film, and The Substance‘s ability to be both financially fruitful and show longevity at the Box Office is worth applause. Split between $13 million domestically and over $15 million internationally, strong word-of-mouth thanks to positive reviews and the movie’s more shocking moments have helped it continue to sell tickets, even outperforming Deadpool & Wolverine in a third of the theaters over the most recent weekend.
There’s no doubt that The Substance makes its point loud and proud, with a telescopic lens held up to beauty standards in our modern world. Through the use of mind-popping gore, the film navigates an ultimately sensitive subject with nuance and without judgment, thriving by never letting its assessment of beauty standards become a lesson. This is something discussed in Perri Nemiroff’s interview with some of the cast and crew for Collider at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. In the interview, Fargeat said:
“Well, for me, of course, the whole idea of the movie is to make people understand why we think we have no choice but to chase that. That’s the only way, I think, for a long time, society has valued women — through their appearance, through the fact that they are young, that they are sexy, that they can give birth. So that’s the way that you build for yourself, some way to be loved, some way to have a place in the world. When this goes away, you don’t have a place in the world anymore. You want to disappear. So I think many of us think that the only way to still have a place, to still have an existence, to still have people loving us, is through seeking eternal use or hyper-sexualization.
I wouldn’t blame anyone for just wanting to exist
. I think the way society is still structured, and everything that is around is still making us feel very much that that’s one of the only ways that we have. It’s starting to change a little bit, but I think it’s gonna take a lot of time until we really feel, for real, that we should take our place in the world.”
The Substance is about to hit $30 million globally. You can still catch the film in select theaters now.
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